here's the shot I got permission to use from the last time I used the 5d2 for anything semi-useful.Was gonna put it into the other thread but I'm not gonna spend much more time on this topic so here, have yerselves a field-day with it.

This was shot while experimenting with variety of outdoor settings we were in and done in a bit of a hurry.Client LIKED this shot for the facial expressions and overall look, I did my best to make it work.

Shot was initially adjusted with DPP, exported 16b TIFF to PS to touch up some cosmetic details and saved.16b tiff then toned and adjusted in LR3 for printing and displaying in low light viewing conditions.

They loved the end result.I'm bothered by the crosshatch noise on the ladies pant legs. And no, it isn't fabric texture.

Note: the detail shot was from a scaled file supplied to the client, not the full res version which is somewhat larger and the crosshatch noise even more prominent. It's less visible when printed, but still detectable if I look at it.

Usually, great tools helping us to get a good photos. But sometimes great photos doesnt mean come from a great tools. We need to find the solution to cover our tools weakness. In this topic, we talk/complaining about canon weakness is DR.

So find the solution how to cover canon low DR problem..in the same time we can learn something new..

1st time im upgrading my 7d to 5dm3, Im not impress, but when I read the manual book and take some pictures, I found my 5dm3 is really amazing camera.. and now..im still using my 7d for landscape and xploring my 5dm3..

Please can you post the same image before you did any adjustments? The untouched RAW file with everything zeroed, obviously, with the necessary masking. I well understand your dissatisfaction with the image as posted, but as it is a devoid of strong shadows and you used flash it doesn't, on the face of it, appear to be a dynamic range issue.

Quite possibly a shadow detail one but not a dynamic range issue, it would be very nice to talk this one example through.

Done. Appended it to the originals on pg 8. Flash was 580EX II.

I've sometimes wondered if this camera also had a metering flaw, despite the -2/3 EV as shot.I usually used it in full manual mode to get consistent results; it would occasionally be over or under by multiple EV if AE.Light was changing too fast that day to rely on manual.

Just before I sold it I took a few shots of a blank white sheet to check the metering.Was in aperture priority AE, set 0EV exp at 1.0s. resulting histogram was centered right on 0 in DPP raw tab.when +1 EV was dialed in it gave me a 2s exp.m hist was on +1when +2 EV was dialed in it gave me a 13s exp! hist was blown out of courseI completed the series in full manual. histogram was as expected in remaining shots.

Usually, great tools helping us to get a good photos. But sometimes great photos doesnt mean come from a great tools. We need to find the solution to cover our tools weakness. In this topic, we talk/complaining about canon weakness is DR.

So find the solution how to cover canon low DR problem..in the same time we can learn something new..

1st time im upgrading my 7d to 5dm3, Im not impress, but when I read the manual book and take some pictures, I found my 5dm3 is really amazing camera.. and now..im still using my 7d for landscape and xploring my 5dm3..

You are correct.

I don't have as much problem with limited DR as with HOW it's limited.My 40D and old Rebels have virtually no detectable banding as base ISO. My 5d2 and 7D were pretty bad if I had to push the shadows. I've pushed the 40D and even the old rebel bodies the same way with much better results.And THAT, I believe, is the key of the whole argument. Seems some recent Canon cameras were a step backwards in IQ at low ISO. And it also seems to vary in severity from body to body of the same model. I think I had a 5d2 and 7d that were somewhat flawed. Sold them, was tired of the disappointing results compared to my other cameras.

You know, if the 5DIII had inadequate dynamic range, then there's no way I would have been able to have made the attached image -- an image which includes detail both in the shadows at the bottom of the Grand Canyon and in the Sun itself. Anybody care to guess how many stops that includes? Whatever the number is, if you think you need more dynamic range than I've captured here, you're nuts.

Sure, it's multiple exposures blended together. So what?

Point is, the instances where the 5DIII has insufficient dynamic range to capture a scene in one exposure but where a D800 does are so far and few between that it's insane to base your camera choice just on that one metric alone. Especially considering that, in the overwhelming majority of said instances, the proper solution isn't a camera with more dynamic range but rather to fix or embrace the light.

Think about it.

If it's landscape, either you should be waiting for the Golden Hour or you should be blending exposures (either digitally or with a graduated neutral density filter) or you should be embracing the harshness and working for something extremely contrasty with lots of black, lots of white, and not much gray. Even if you could capture it all in a single exposure, you're still going to need to make intelligent decisions as to which parts of that dynamic range you're going to keep and which you're going to throw away, since there's no output medium that can come close to reproducing anywhere near as much dynamic range as cameras already capture.

If it's portraiture or still life (including product photography), if you can't control the light, you should be fired.

If it's some sort of photojournalism, you either should be accurately representing the scene (which is going to mean some combination of crushed shadows or blown highlights) or you should again be fixing the light.

Now, will there be situations where you can use a couple extra stops of less noise in the shadows and some digital fill to simulate the flash / reflector you didn't have with you on the set? Yes. But will the results be as good as if you had actually properly used a flash and / or reflector? Hell no.

And will there be people doing some sort of photojournalism who want to make the results look more like portraiture? Sure...but I hope you'll excuse me if I'm not interested in that kind of distortion.

David we have had our discussion a long time, but not here.The real thing is that people do not know the benefits of large DR and the work in raw converters and photoshop.It is like the 10000 hours I have been spending in the lab and make copies, and now I do not know the words for after light/ give more lights in some areas, shadow the light and make a cast, mask etc with different tools and with my hands. Or handle a 400iso film and expose it after 200iso and cut the developments in minutes to get a contrasty motive softer developed and then to be able to reproduce this contrasty motive with the right hardness of photo paper (I think you know what I mean)

The same you can do by scanning a film and some after work or with a digital camera and raw, the basic is that we have no clipping in the high lights and in a contrasty motive, this is way a large DR means a lot

Yea I have seen his video before – but, at the end of the day, who cares if you can do stuff like this if you don’t produce art with it. There is a huge difference between demonstrating what the technology can do and actually demonstrating that you can do something artistically compelling with that technology. It is that second part that we never seem to see (or very seldom see). The proponents of this marvelous sensor technology would be better served by putting up compelling examples of stuff that can be done with it (that cannot be done with any other of the options out there) rather than the contrived stuff they tend to post. Unfortunately, they cannot because there really aren’t any (or at least far, far fewer than the low-ISO, wide DR fan club would want us to believe). If you remove the artificial limitations that these guys usually like to lay down (don’t want to carry my tripod, have to get it in a single shot, etc.) there aren’t too many shots that you cannot nail with any of the latest top notch gear by working around whatever limitations it has (and a competent photographer will do this). I don’t see the gear as a serious limitation.

To me, the primary benefit of the technology is that if you have a bad exposure for whatever reason, you can lift the shadows a bit and fix it. You clearly have more leeway in this regard with the later Nikon gear than the Canon stuff and that is mainly due to the pattern noise, not the random noise based DR difference (that DxO measures). This is a huge benefit for the Nikon gear; however, in fairness to Canon, I have never really had a problem with their equipment for any real world work I have done.

you can not be serious-are you. why then discuss large DR or a lens resolution from different lenses?IF its not matter?what are you saying?

I am completely serious and I think that the post was reasonably clear. I think that a lot of people are making a much bigger deal out of this than it deserves, making mountains out of mole-hills IMO. I think I was pretty clear in my last bit where I, myself, thought the real benefit lies. And, yes, I am sure that the same is true for a lot of the discussions about lens resolution but I tend not to participate in those (not sure why -- they are probably interesting as well).

One of the things I notice about photography forums (and other things like High End audio, Apple vs. PC, iPhone vs. Galaxy3… the list goes on) is people tend to get wound up in the minutia to the point that it becomes almost religion. I don’t expect those that are religious regarding the DR differences to agree with me but perhaps some others will find value in the commentary.

I am starting to agree with the popcorn guys though, but I think in my case, I'll go for a martini :-).

Nikon may very well be leading in dynamic range during this round of camera bodies, however there are many reasons that one might consider Canon better. The fact of the matter is that any of these bodies (Nikon or Canon) have cutting edge technology that would have been unheard of just a few years ago and are light years ahead of the quality of past digital cameras.

The 5D Mark III is far from being "inadequate." It's more than adequate for most photographers. If you need more than what the 5D3 can deliver, you should consider medium format cameras.

canon rumors FORUM

Is everybody sleeping in this morning? Where's the ruckus I expected to find over the 5d2 samples I posted?

In one more kick, at a camera that I think is junk with too many flaws, primarily its terribly noisy low ISO shadow performance, I ran a quick test on some files I had shot for this purpose just before I sold it to some poor sap.

I'd shot 1 EV steps from -5 to +3 of a smooth toned nearly neutral surface. Under wide-specrum flourescent, unfortunately, the sun was on the other side of the planet at the time so I couldn't use it.

Going from my real-world e.g. back on pg 8 of this thread, the ladies black pants seem to be responsible for the -5 EV hump in the histogram.So I took my -5 EV sample shot into ACR, RAISED IT LESS THAN 2 STOPS AND THE FPN WAS ALREADY A PROBLEM.If the 5d2 has nearly 4 stops above 0, and I'm being generous here, then the 5 stops below are only 9 EV worth of DR out of what it's claimed on DxO to be over 11 stops.

Well, if one wants to do ANY pushing in post, the DxOmark measurement for this camera's DR is still misrepresented, it's still woefully optimistic.

By my simple measurements, if you need to do a +2 EV push in the deep shadows, for whatever reason, then

the 5D Mark II has a USEFUL DYNAMIC RANGE OF LESS THAN 9 STOPS before pattern noise becomes a problem.= = = = = =ADDENDUM 13-02-10 2320mst:I knew it was likely even worse than this so I quickly checked a couple other test shots:the -4 EV shot, raised less than 2 stops, also shows FPNthe -3 EV shot, will also show FPN if raised by 1 to 2 stops!

5D2 is now down to a 7 or 8 stop DR camera if any appearance of FPN is the cutoff point.Little wonder I was not happy with it.Anyone else want to do the same tests with their 5D2? It might be satisfying to know I had a lemon.OTOH, you might not want to know the truth about your own camera.= = = = = =That, my Canon-loving friends, is what I call a P-o-S camera and that's why I got rid of mine.That, is why the 5D2 was the worst camera in my stable for my purposes and the most disappointing piece of Canon gear I'd ever purchased.That, is the kind of useful information you can get from shooting dark frames and pushing them in post.That, is why the 6D is looking like a major low ISO IQ improvement over the 5D2 and one main reason why I'd recommend it over the 5d2 for anyone who can afford the price difference, if they want to shoot Canon.

And finally, that is why I'd like to see a lot less moaning on this topic in general from people who haven't done any basic tests on this camera. Maybe I had a lemon, it was one of the earlier made ones. I doubt it. Altho it did meter with too much variability compared to my other, older bodies.

If you don't push in post, ever, for any reason, then your 5d2 will likely serve you well enough.IF you do need to push in post, for creative reasons or merely to recover from an underexposure error, then the 5d2 could be a disappointing camera for you.

Since this is a 5d3 thread, sort of, shoot your own tests and see what you come up with. I don't have one, don't want one.= = = = = =another addendum - I-R agrees with me. See their DR results page, closer to the bottomwww.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/E5D2/E5D2IMATEST.HTMand their sample images look to be cleaner in the shadows than shots from my camera= = = = = =